1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a splicing apparatus that splices tapes, such as ACF tapes. Furthermore, the present invention relates to an attaching apparatus that includes the splicing apparatus for splicing the tapes and that attaches an adhesive material on a board, such as a glass panel. More particularly, the present invention relates to an attaching apparatus that attaches an Anisotropic Conductive Film (ACF) on a terminal portion of the glass panel.
2. Background Art
ACFs have been attached on terminal portions of glass panels for use in liquid crystal displays or plasma displays, and electronic components for image formation have been mounted on the attached ACFs in order to ensure electrical continuity between the terminal portions.
These ACFs have been provided on one side of long resin tapes referred to as base tapes, and have been supplied as the ACF tapes. The ACFs can be attached on the glass panels by pressing the ACF tapes to the glass panels as they are and peeling off only the base tapes.
These ACFs have been automatically attached on the glass panels using ACF attaching apparatuses industrially, and the ACF tapes that are being wound onto reels and that provide the ACFs have been supplied to the ACF attaching apparatuses.
The ACFs required for a glass panel are being lengthened due to upsizing of displays in recent years. Thus, even when the ACF tapes being wound onto the reels are sufficiently long, they may be used up for a short period of time, and replacement frequency of the reels tends to be increased.
Operations of the ACF attaching apparatuses have been suspended when replacing reels with new reels conventionally. After the replacement, an ACF tape has been forwarded from the reel manually, and set through complicated paths for passing the tapes in the ACF attaching apparatus.
However, in the aforementioned method, it takes considerable time to set the ACF tapes. Thus, as illustrated in FIG. 1, a method to be applied to an ACF tape has been suggested. In the method, an additional ACF tape is spliced to an ACF tape that has been used so as to increase the number of turns of the ACF tape per reel (for example, Patent Reference 1). According to this method, the additional ACF tape is spliced to the used ACF tape having an established tape path. As the used ACF tape is taken up, the additional ACF tape passes the tape path. Therefore, a new ACF tape does not have to be set through the tape path.
Patent Reference 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-202738
Although Patent Reference 1 discloses a method for splicing ACF tapes, it fails to specifically describe which kind of apparatus splices the tapes.
Furthermore, the ACF tape only measures 1 to 2 mm wide by 50 μm thick approximately, which is ultra thin. Thus, it is supposedly very difficult to splice the tapes manually, and such operation takes a very long time.
Furthermore, when the ACF attaching apparatus is used for splicing these ACF tapes, operations of the ACF attaching apparatus have to be suspended for a long time, and thus little improvement in operation rates of the ACF attaching apparatus can be expected.
In addition, when the ACF tapes are butt-spliced in a straight line as described above, a displacement between the ACF tapes in a width direction frequently occurs, and further it is very difficult to maintain the straight line of the spliced ACF tapes.
Furthermore, when splicing of ACF tapes causes any displacement or distortion, in particular, when a displacement between the spliced ACF tapes in a width direction occurs, there may be a possibility of dropping of the spliced ACF tapes from rollers included in a tape path in the case where the tapes pass through the tape path. Thus, when the ACF tapes are out of the tape path, the tape path needs to be set again manually. Thus, there is no point in splicing the ACF tapes, reducing the operation rates of the ACF attaching apparatus.
The present invention is to solve the aforementioned problems, and a first object is to provide a tape splicing apparatus that can prevent a displacement when splicing tapes together as much as possible and that can mechanically splice tapes for supplying an additional tape while maintaining a straight line of the spliced tapes.
Furthermore, a second object is to provide an attaching apparatus that can precisely splice an additional ACF tape to a tape that is being used and that can promote automation of replacing ACF tapes without suspending operations of the ACF attaching apparatus.
Furthermore, a third object is to provide an attaching apparatus that can continue to stably operate for a long period of time by holding the ACF tapes in volume and through automation of replacing the ACF tapes.